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Predator in the classroom: Brittany Zamora sentenced to 20 years for sexually abusing student

The former Arizona sixth-grade teacher was sentenced for having sexual contact with her 13-year-old student.

Author: Antonia Mejia, Cameron La Fontaine

Published: 6:59 PM EDT July 11, 2019

Updated: 5:18 PM EDT July 21, 2019

Editor's note: The following story contains language that may not be suitable for younger audiences. Discretion is advised.

More than a year after Brittany Zamora was arrested for having sexual contact with her 13-year-old student, the former sixth-grade teacher was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The 20-year sentence was the minimum allowed by her plea agreement, Zamora's lawyer said after the hearing. Zamora pleaded guilty to sexual conduct with a minor, attempted molestation and public sexual indecency.

Zamora's lawyer called it a win, but the victim's parents say their son is "changed forever."

"The kids loved her"

Brittany Zamora graduated from Arizona State University with honors. According to her resume, she was a 4.0 student while pursuing both her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Zamora took a teaching job at Littleton Elementary School in Avondale where she says she was awarded “Teacher of the Year” in 2016.

Zamora was then recruited to a sixth-grade teaching job at the Las Brisas Academy by the principal at the school, Timothy Dickey, who was previously the assistant principal at Littleton Elementary.

“I was the one that told her, ‘Hey there’s a sixth-grade position open at that school,’ you know. She knew I had gotten a job here and she's a good teacher and I thought she would be a great fit and I thought she would be good,” Dickey said in an interview with Goodyear police detectives.

Dickey said Zamora worked well with students.

“The kids loved her,” he told a detective.

“If you get bored, text me”

According to police reports and interviews, sometime in the late fall of 2017, Zamora was going to be out of school the next day and allegedly told her students, “I’m going to be out of school, so if you get bored, text me because I’ll be really bored.”

One of her students, a 13-year-old boy, did.

“Hi Ms. Zamora,” he texted her.

According to reports and interviews, the texting continued that day and afterwards. The 13-year-old boy said it eventually turned into flirting.

“I don’t remember how it got like really intense, but we would like flirt and she would be like, ‘OMG I love you.’ And I would tell her I loved her too,” the boy told detectives. “And then she would talk about how she wanted to do stuff with me and I’d tell her that I wanted to do that too.”

They would eventually kiss for the first time.

“The first time we kissed, like I was saying bye to her and I gave her a hug and she like started kissing me, so I kissed her back,” the victim told detectives.

"Kids spread rumors and kids say things"

The man who recruited Zamora to teach at Las Brisas Academy was now investigating claims that she may have had an inappropriate relationship with a student.

“I asked multiple students questions and didn’t really get a lot of information. I got a lot of that she favors him and that he gets away with more things than other kids,” Dickey said in an interview with a detective.

“Kids spread rumors and kids say things and it’s kind of common as an administrator and that’s typically what it ends up being, you know what I mean?” Dickey said to police.

Two days after getting the written statement from the three students, Dickey addressed Zamora’s class.

“The first thing I did was that I commended the students that came to me and gave me a written statement,” Dickey said in an interview with police. “I didn’t specifically give names but I said those students that came to me did the right thing. However, the students that are spreading rumors and talking amongst each other, that doesn’t help anybody and that doesn’t lead to any solutions.”

Zamora approached Principal Dickey about the rumors.

“She started crying and she said, ‘I don’t know, the only two things I care about in my life you know are my husband and my career,’” Dickey told the detective.

“So I started asking her questions, ‘Do you talk to kids outside school?’ ‘No, I only talk to kids through Classcraft.’ That was consistent with what the kids were saying.”

Dickey said he gave Zamora some guidelines.

“I didn’t think it was anything like [sexual abuse], but I was a little bit concerned and I had seen some unprofessional behavior at that point,” Dickey said.

The detective is heard asking Dickey if he ever talked to the parents about the rumors.

“I didn’t,” Dickey is heard saying. “That was one that, I didn’t want to blow it up, you know? And make it more than it really was and I didn’t, you know, that was it.”

"They were just doing it and it was very uncomfortable"

Police say there were at least four sexual encounters between Zamora and the victim, which took place between the beginning of February 2018 and the middle of March 2018.

A little over a week after Zamora spoke to Principal Dickey about the rumors, she and the victim would engage in a sexual encounter.

On Feb. 16, 2018, Zamora told the victim to sneak out of his grandparents’ home where he was staying for the weekend, the victim told detectives. The two engaged in oral sex in Zamora's car.

The next day, Zamora and the victim engaged in another sexual encounter at his grandparents’ home.

On March 7, 2018, the victim said he had sex with Zamora in her classroom after a school talent show.

Another student, a friend of the victim, told detectives he saw the victim and Zamora touch each other after the talent show when the victim and Zamora had a sexual encounter.

The detective asks the friend if Zamora was saying anything.

“No, they were just doing it and it was very uncomfortable, so that’s why the second day they were doing stuff I just left the room,” the student told a detective.

The victim described another sexual encounter in Zamora's classroom that he says happened the next day, March 8, 2018.

Zamora also had an inappropriate encounter with that same student that witnessed them on March 7. She allegedly asked him if he was circumcised or uncircumcised. When the student said he didn’t know what that meant, she looked it up on her phone for him.

That second victim said Zamora never went beyond inappropriate remarks with him.

Screenshots of direct messages on Instagram between Zamora and the original victim showed explicit flirting.

Credit: 12 News

In one of them, Zamora said she would quit her job and have sex with the victim all day if she could.

"Did you have sex with your teacher?"

The victim’s stepmother has a parental app on the victim’s phone and her phone so that it looks for any key words she chooses. She’ll get an alert on her phone when those words are used on the victim’s phone, according to her interview with detectives.

On March 21, 2018, his stepmother got an alert on her phone of the word ‘baby’ getting continuously used.

“But this time I saw at the bottom it had ‘Mrs. Zamora’, the Instagram profile had her name,” the victim’s stepmother told detectives. “And I am familiar with her profile name because she has messaged me through Instagram as well.”

The victim’s father came home and his parents asked him if he had done anything with Zamora.

The victim’s parents asked how it happened and the victim described the incident after the talent show and also told them about sneaking out of his grandparents’ home.

“She contacted him on his phone and asked him where he was, got him to give her the address of my in-laws' house,” the stepmother told detectives. “She told my son, ‘My husband is fishing, I want to see you.’”

The victim’s parents called Principal Dickey that night, who called police.

“Your wife decided to be a monster and prey on a child,” the victim’s father says. “She scarred my son mentally. Do you understand what a 13-year-old boy did? Having sex with a teacher? Do you get that at all?”

The father then says, “Do me a favor, do not call this number back again. The next time you’ll hear from me will be in court.”

"They're going to tear me apart"

A day later, on March 22, 2018, Zamora was arrested and charged with nine counts of sexual conduct with a minor, two counts of molestation of a child and one count of obscene material transmitted to a minor. All felonies.

The victim’s family is also suing the school district for failing to report the possible abuse sooner. Forty-three days passed from the time Principal Dickey received the written statement from students about a possible inappropriate relationship between Zamora and a student to the time Zamora was arrested.

In June of this year, the school district admitted Principal Dickey did not immediately tell police.

Lawsuit settlement

Brittany Zamora's husband Daniel and the victim's parents settled a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed amount, lawyers announced Thursday.

The lawsuit filed against Daniel Zamora and the Liberty Elementary School District claimed the husband should have been aware of his wife's actions with her underage student and had a duty to inform law enforcement.

Brittany Zamora is sentenced to 20 years in prison in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Friday, July 12, 2019. Judge Sherry Stephens also handed down two lifetime terms of probation to the former Goodyear, Arizona, teacher for molesting a 13-year-old student.

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Pool photo by Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic

Brittany Zamora is sentenced to 20 years in prison in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Friday, July 12, 2019. Judge Sherry Stephens also handed down two lifetime terms of probation to the former Goodyear, Arizona, teacher for molesting a 13-year-old student.

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Pool photo by Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic

Brittany Zamora wipes away a tear after being sentenced to 20 years in prison in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Friday, July 12, 2019. Judge Sherry Stephens also handed down two lifetime terms of probation to the former Goodyear, Arizona, teacher for molesting a 13-year-old student.

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AP

Brittany Zamora wipes away a tear as her attorney, Belen Olmedo Guerra, pats her shoulder. Zamora was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens in Phoenix, Friday, July 12, 2019. Judge Stephens also handed down two lifetime terms of probation to the former Goodyear, Arizona, teacher for molesting a 13-year-old student. (Tom Tingle/Arizona Republic via AP, Pool)

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Pool photo by Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic

Brittany Zamora is sentenced to 20 years in prison in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Friday, July 12, 2019. Judge Sherry Stephens also handed down two lifetime terms of probation to the former Goodyear, Arizona, teacher for molesting a 13-year-old student.

Guerra said Zamora’s 20-year sentence was the minimum sentence allowed by her plea agreement.